November 9-12, 2017, the 49th Annual ASEEES Convention was held in the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel on Michigan Avenue. The convention theme “Transgressions” was inspired by the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

As usual, one had to weigh the merits of the panels and roundtables in each session, considering both the known and unknown participants, the provocative titles that may or may not live up to their titles, and the wide array of fascinating topics before making one’s selection of which panels and/or individual papers to attend.

Two medieval Slavic-themed panels were scheduled during the opening session on Thursday afternoon (1pm-2:45pm) as was the first Slavic librarian panel:

Session 1-36: Transgressions in Translation Panel 1: Transgressive Translations in the Slavic Middle Ages – “Navy Pier” Room, 10th floor
Chair: David J. Birnbaum, U of Pittsburgh
Papers: Robert Romanchuk, Florida State U, “The Slavic Digenis Akritis: Translation out of Greek vs. Translation into Slavic”;
Moshe Taube, Hebrew U of Jerusalem (Israel), “Subversive Translations from Hebrew in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in Muscovy”;
Discussant: Julia Verkholantsev, U of Pennsylvania.

Session 1-41: Agents of Change: Re-Thinking and Re-Crafting Textiles and Texts in Early Slavic Contexts – “Printers Row,” 2nd floor
Chair: Jennifer B. Spock, Eastern Kentucky U
Papers: Heidi M. Sherman, U of Wisconsin-Green Bay, “How Medieval Novgorod’s Heckles Colonized Soviet Archaeological Textiles”;
Anna Arays, Yale U, “Typographical Transgressions: The Transformation of Cyrillic Type from West to East”;
M.A. Johnson, Ohio State U, “Old Wine into New Bottles: Preserving the Content of Legal Documents in Hilandar Monastery for Over Eight Centuries”;
Discussant: Michael A. Pesenson, U of Texas at Austin.

1-21 Transgressions against the Ethnic Printing Press – “Huron,” 10th floor
Chair: George Andrew Spencer, U of Wisconsin–Madison
Papers: Angela Cannon, US Library of Congress, “Russian-American Publications in the Library of Congress”;
Joseph Lenkart, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “The Consolidation of Publishing in the Early Soviet Period and the Emergence of National Bibliographies in Ethnic Republics”;
Wookjin Cheun, Indiana U Bloomington, “Korean Press in Russia and Central Asia”;
Discussant: Zina Somova, East View Information Services.

The second session (3pm-4:45pm) offered intriguing roundtables such as:

2-13 Transgressing Identity: Choosing (Not) to Be Carpatho-Rusyn – (Roundtable) – Sponsored by: Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center
Chair: Nicholas Kyle Kupensky, Yale U
Participants: Kristina Marie Cantin, U of Tennessee; Agnieszka Halemba, U of Warsaw (Poland); Sarah Latanyshyn, UC Santa; and Barbara Janet MacGaffey, Bucknell U;

2-37 The Post-Yugoslav Generation and the Making of a Yugoslav Art History – (Roundtable)
Chair: Ivana Bago, Duke U
Participants: Branislav Jakovljevic, Stanford U; Jasmina Tumbas, SUNY Buffalo; Jelena Vesic, Independent Scholar; and Bojana Videkanic, U of Waterloo (Canada);

and the very well attended:

2-41 Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going? New and Future Views on Early Modern Russia – (Roundtable)
Chair: Robert Owen Crummey, UC Davis
Participants: Valerie Ann Kivelson, U of Michigan; Rachel Dawn Koroloff, U of Göttingen (Germany); Mikhail Markovich Krom, European U at St. Petersburg (Russia); and Daniel B. Rowland, U of Kentucky.

Session 3 (5pm-6:45pm) offered the second panel organized by Slavic and East European Studies librarians.

3-21 : Collecting the Grey Literature from Eastern Europe: Opportunities and Challenges – (Roundtable)
Chair: Liladhar R. Pendse, UC Berkeley
Participants: Robert Harding Davis, Columbia U / Cornell U; Thomas Francis Keenan, Princeton U; Bea Klotz, Central and East European Online Library; and Gudrun Tatjana Wirtz, Bavarian State Library (Germany).